Composition No. 1: Show What The Body is Thinking is a solo piece based on lived experience and intuitive responses. Charlotte is using movement to explore the notion of the body retaining its lived histories and the effect this has on individual movement. She explores the body as a container of both happiness and trauma and the effect this has on intuitive response. Based off of the Stravinsky statement: ‘I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it’. Charlotte is working around this idea of intuitive response to music instead of the more traditional method of counting. To respond to a piece of music as a true exploration of what it is to be within her body and how her body intends to move the piece. An exploration of the body taking over, feeling both the music and the movement rather than restricting through counting.

The process began as a Developing Your Creative Practice (Arts Council Grant) A research based piece, developed within the Siobhan Davies Research Studios. Charlotte focused on alternative ways of counting and memorising, using singing, written and spoken phrasing to mark shifts of intention within movement and to support the memorising of choreography. Listening to the music for months to embody it. The work shifts between choreographed phrases and moments of improvisation where the exploration of bodily intuition is particularly apparent.

The themes of the work developed from conversations around the body and what it means to inhabit and live within this- focusing on internal triggers, twinges leading to spasmings and exploring the limits of flexibility and breadth. This is performed through arabesques extending further, testings within lunges, short torso isolations turning into full back bends. Through this exploration Charlotte pushes the limits and confines of her body. She uses movement to describe what is verbally indescribable and performs feelings.

The research into counting and memorising choreography enabled Charlotte to move on a weekly basis and to work with a Studio Assistant Artist as a memory bank and to record the rehearsal and experimentation within the development of this piece.

The choice of titling Composition No. 1 reveals this as an on- going piece of research that may take numerous iterations and forms. It exposes Charlottes constant learning and exploring around alternative methods of counting and choreographing.

The work was created with Photographer and Filmmaker Camilla Greenwell, Isabella Furness Studio Assistant Artist and Archivist, ELLISS Costume Design and Make-up Artist Gina Parr.  

The film takes place in Sunset Studios and the music is by Oceanvs Orientalis. 

The film will launch by the end of 2022.